As they were rather long for common use in the family, they were shortened into the easier forms of Sossy and Minthy, under which designation the babes began very soon to thrive mightily, turning bread and milk into the substance of little sinners at a great rate, and growing as if they were put out at compound interest.
This short episode shows us the family conditions surrounding Byles Gridley, who, as we were saying, had just been called down to tea by Miss Susan Posey.
"I am coming, my dear," he said,--which expression quite touched Miss Susan, who did not know that it was a kind of transferred caress from the delicious page he was reading.

It was not the living child that was kissed, but the dead one lying under the snow, if we may make a trivial use of a very sweet and tender thought we all remember.
Not long after this, happening to call in at the lawyer's office, his eye was caught by the corner of a book lying covered up by a pile of papers.

Somehow or other it seemed to look very natural to him.
Could that be a copy of "Thoughts on the Universe"?
He watched his opportunity, and got a hurried sight of the volume.

His own treatise, sure enough! Leaves Uncut.

Opened of itself to the one hundred and twentieth page.